24 Facts About Winfried Kretschmann

Winfried Kretschmann is the first member of the Greens to serve in these offices.

Winfried Kretschmann has been a member of the state parliament, the Landtag of Baden-Wurttemberg, since 1980, in the constituency of Nurtingen.

Winfried Kretschmann was the chairman of his party's parliamentary group.

Winfried Kretschmann was re-elected in May 2016 as Minister-President while leading a new coalition with the Christian Democrats.

Winfried Kretschmann's parents were expellees from the mostly Roman Catholic region of Ermland after World War II.

Winfried Kretschmann grew up on the rural Swabian Alb.

Winfried Kretschmann attended a Catholic boarding school in Sigmaringen and passed his Abitur in Riedlingen.

From 1973 to 1975 Winfried Kretschmann was active in the Communist League of West Germany.

Winfried Kretschmann later denounced this orientation towards the revolutionary positions of the German student movement as a "political misapprehension"; today he is more ecologically oriented and counted among the members of the more conservative wing of the Greens.

Winfried Kretschmann is one of the founding members of the Baden-Wurttemberg section of the German Green Party.

In 1980, Winfried Kretschmann was for the first time elected into the Landtag, the state parliament, and a first stint of his chairmanship of his party's parliamentary group followed from 1983 to 1985.

In 1988, Winfried Kretschmann returned to Baden-Wurttemberg, being re-elected into the Landtag in 1988.

Winfried Kretschmann ran on a platform that called for shutting down nuclear power plants, overhauling a public school system the Greens see as elitist, and imposing speed limits on Autobahns.

Also, Winfried Kretschmann is widely regarded as having benefited from his party's opposition to Stuttgart 21, a massive development project in Baden-Wurttemberg's capital.

Winfried Kretschmann's election ended 58 years of uninterrupted rule in Baden-Wurttemberg by the Christian Democratic Union party.

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel held preliminary talks to sound out possible common ground with both the Green Party in an attempt to form a coalition government following the 2013 elections, Winfried Kretschmann was part of the Greens' delegation.

Winfried Kretschmann was confirmed as leader of a coalition government of Greens and Christian Democrats in May 2016.

In July 2020, Winfried Kretschmann-led government of Baden-Wurttemberg banned full-face coverings burqas, niqabs for all school children.

Winfried Kretschmann said that full-face veiling did not belong in a free society.

Winfried Kretschmann belongs to the more Realpolitik-oriented, centrist wing of the Green Party, and has been characterised as holding economically liberal, pro-business views.

Winfried Kretschmann objected to the Greens' election platform of tax increases, warning the leadership in a public letter to avoid any move that would be detrimental to business.

When Bavaria filed a lawsuit in the Federal Constitutional Court in 2012, asking the judges to back their call for an overhaul of the German system of financial transfers from wealthier states to the country's weaker economies, Winfried Kretschmann decided that his state would not back the lawsuit and instead urged reform via negotiations between all the states.

Winfried Kretschmann has in the past been vocal about climate change policies.

Winfried Kretschmann is married with Gerlinde, has three children and lives in Sigmaringen.